Targeting TV

"The media
business, they used to say, was a license to print money,â€ť wrote the TV
trade journal Broadcasting & Cable in 2001. As media mogul Barry
Diller put it: â€śThe only way you can lose money in broadcasting is if
somebody steals it from you.â€ť

Why? Broadcast licenses for
television grant exclusive control over the airwaves to their holders. The
original rationale for this was that the scarcity of broadcast spectrum
required that access to it be strictly regulated. A government-appointed
referee, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), awarded licenses to
those parties deemed most able to serve â€śthe public interest, convenience
and necessity.â€ť If they didnâ€™t fulfill their duties, the FCC could revoke
a license and award it to another party that might better serve the
public.

But the FCCâ€™s practice in this regard has been dismal to
say the least. Though licensed broadcasters have been required to operate
in the public interest since the early days of radio, for decades the
industry-friendly FCC did little or nothing to penalize stations for
ignoring their public service obligations. Indeed, not once since the
FCCâ€™s founding in 1934 has the Commission revoked a single license of its
own accord.

The upsurge of media activism
nationwide in recent years has brought with it increased efforts to bring
a measure of accountability to broadcast licenses and the media conglomerates
that hold them

The Fight for â€śStandingâ€ť

Stations
must renew their licenses every eight years, at which time citizens can
file objections with the FCC. The public didnâ€™t always have the right to
weigh in on the performance of TV stations. For the first 30 years of its
existence, the FCC saw itself as the sole and sufficient representative of
the U.S. public in the broadcast licensing process. It didnâ€™t permit
citizens to intervene in license renewal proceedings until forced to by
federal judges in 1969.

During the 1960s TV increasingly became
the target of criticism from across the political spectrum. In 1961 Newton
Minow, then FCC chair, famously decried TV as a â€śvast wastelandâ€ť before
the broadcastersâ€™ main lobbyist, the National Association of Broadcasters
(NAB). In 1962 the Commission conducted an inquiry into the lack of local
programming on Chicago-area stations,
taking testimony from a range of area unions, community organizations, and
church groups. Though the hearings led to no policy changes, they
reaffirmed the neglected requirement that broadcasters carry programming
that reflects community concerns.

The turning point in the
struggle for greater public participation in broadcast licensing came two
years later. In 1964 the United Church of Christâ€™s (UCC) Office of
Communication, in partnership with the NAACP, contested the license of
WLBT, a Jackson, Mississippi TV station with ties to the segregationist
white Citizenâ€™s Council. The UCCâ€™s petition cited WLBTâ€™s slanted coverage
of the civil rights movement and its neglect of the African American
community in Jackson as evidence that the station had violated its public
interest mandate. They demanded that the UCC and its petitioners be heard
in the license renewal process.

Predictably, the FCC rejected the
UCCâ€™s petition. However, Everett Parker of the UCCâ€™s Office of
Communication appealed the FCCâ€™s decision and, in 1966, won the right to
be heard in license renewal proceedings. The legal battle over WLBT
dragged on until 1969 when the U.S. Court of Appeals finally ordered the
FCC to vacate the stationâ€™s license. (In 1983, the station was permanently
licensed to a majority-black ownership group.)

The UCCâ€™s victory
paved the way for an upsurge of media activism aimed
at holding broadcasters accountable to the public. Throughout the 1970s,
progressive advocacy groups successfully used license renewal objections
to pressure stations to hire more women and people of color and to be more
socially responsible in their programming and news reporting. For example,
in 1972 the New York City chapter of the National Organization for Women
(NOW) filed a â€śpetition to deny,â€ť charging WABC-TV with sex discrimination
in employment and programming. Though the petition was ultimately
rejected, NOWâ€™s challenge (and the subsequent negotiations with the
network) was credited with helping expand the number of women employed in
the TV industry and with ultimately changing programming for the better.

While the 1980s saw the number of license renewal challenges
dwindle, the growth of media activism in the
past few years has seen an upsurge in use of the tactic. In 2004 the
national media
activist group Free Press asked the FCC not to re-license eight TV
stations owned by Sinclair Broadcasting in North and South Carolina. The
Baltimore-based TV chain, which operates 62 stations in 39 markets, became
notorious for gutting its local news programs and preventing its ABC
affiliates from showing an episode of â€śNightlineâ€ť reciting the names of
U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq. The company also ordered its stations to air
the anti-Kerry film Stolen Honor during the closing weeks of the
presidential campaign (though it relented under tremendous public outcry).
Free Pressâ€™s brief cited these egregious abuses of power in demanding that
the Commission â€ślook into the full scope and gravityâ€ť of Sinclairâ€™s
behavior.

Also in 2004 the United Church of Christ launched
license challenges against NBC and CBS affiliates in Miami, Florida, after
the networks refused to carry one of the churchâ€™s commercials. The
30-second spot promoted the UCCâ€™s acceptance of all races, classes, ages,
and sexual orientations, but was rejected by network executives as â€śtoo
controversial.â€ť

In Michigan the Grand Rapids Institute for
Information Democracy (GRIID) has monitored the local Fox, ABC, and NBC
affiliates from 1998 through 2005. GRIIDâ€™s web page for a time featured
the slogan: â€śWeâ€™re watching the news. Weâ€™ll let you know if we find any.â€ť
GRIID analyzed their data in partnership with educators, local
politicians, womenâ€™s rights groups, labor unions, and communities of color
to show how local media covered (or
didnâ€™t cover) key issues relevant to these groups. With those communities
as a base of support, GRIID held a hearing at which more than 30 people
testified as part of a series of license challenges.

On November
1, 2005 attorneys for the Media Access Project,
a DC-based public interest law firm, filed two license challenges in
Illinois and Wisconsin. The target was unprecedented: all of the major
commercial TV stations in Milwaukee and Chicago. The
challenges were filed on behalf of three local and national groupsâ€”the
Campaign Legal Center, the Milwaukee Public Interest Media Coalition, and
ChicagoMediaAction. The petitions
charged that the stations had fallen short of their obligations to serve
the public interest by failing to provide adequate coverage of local and
state elections during the 2004 campaign.

The trend continues. A
Chicago-area
progressive newspaper and website named Third Coast Press submitted a
â€śpetition to denyâ€ť of its own â€” one that challenged the licenses of the
cityâ€™s commercial television stations as well as of the cityâ€™s PBS
affiliates, on the grounds they consistently failed to report issues of
concern to people of color and that they marginalized anti-war activists
in the lead up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

A media activist group
in Minneapolis, the Counter-Propaganda Coalition, has announced plans to
challenge a number of incumbent Minnesota TV broadcast licenses in 2006.
At this writing, they are in the midst of assembling a community coalition
and are reaching out to labor, the anti-war movement, communities of
color, and Green Party activists. â€śWe fear that license renewal has become
a rubber stamp,â€ť explained CPC member John Slade. â€śWeâ€™re afraid that what
was supposed to be a democratic process has become a hollow shell and that
these challenges will show Minneapolis-St. Paul how far weâ€™ve fallen.â€ť

Though the likelihood of the FCC revoking any of the contested
licenses is small, the burgeoning media reform movement
is using the license renewal process as an opportunity to raise pointed
questions about the narrow range of political opinion, skewed news, and
trashy entertainment that dominates the nationâ€™s small screens. For
example, the petitions filed in Chicago have attracted
considerable attention. They were mentioned in the Chicago Sun-Times, the
Chicago Daily
Herald, TV Week, and assorted newspapers across the state of Illinois and
were even discussed in Broadcasting & Cable on multiple occasions. The
petitions and publicity triggered panicked denunciations from NAB.

License challenges help promote awareness of the flaws of current
media policy, even
if their immediate hopes of success arenâ€™t very large. They can help lay
the groundwork, along with other related actions, for wider interest in media activism and
hopefully improved U.S. television.

Steve Macek is an assistant
professor of Speech Communication at North Central College in Naperville,
Illinois. Mitchell Szczepanczyk is an organizer with ChicagoMediaAction and a
contributor to many community media projects.

DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed on this
website are those of the individual members of Chicago Media
Action who authored them, and not necessarily those of the entire
membership of Chicago Media Action, nor of Chicago Media Action
as an organization.

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